When he returned from a long vacation, he checked his safe. It was empty, the exterior looked like swiss cheese and the floor was littered with drill bits and snack wrappers. The thieves had spent a lot of time up there, like hours.

They think it was linked to construction workers who built the house, knowing where the hidden room was located.

If it truly is a decoy, put the safe where you know they will see it and spend time to try to open it or try to haul it away. The time they spend to try to open it cuts into their total time in the house. Most "smash and grab" burglars will only spend a few minutes in the house so if they waste time with your decoy they are less likely to find the real safe.

^^This. maybe keep some of the household chemicals in there too. I might be tempted to leave that locker out in the open so they are sure to see it, and waste plenty of their precious time messing with it. Maybe next to the bed, so it's the first thing they see and mess with, but it won't be visible to your more civilized guests. I like the idea of weights and dowels, just so something is banging around up high if they do manage to get it off the wall. Maybe put a bunch of gun stickers on the outside of it too, just to throw them off.

I probably wouldn't store any guns in it if it was being used as a diversion though, well maybe the bulged shotgun, sans the firing pin just so there is a 'gotcha' if they try to sell it.

As for storing guns in a DOJ approved residential security container(which the stack-on is, I have one too), and being charged for it, that's a twisted fantasy. The whole point of locking anything up, especially inside of a locked house is to prevent access. Period. California is fucked up, but not that fucked up.

I've had similar thoughts, OP. A quality safe is a great big neon flashing arrow sign saying "good stuff here". That could work to your advantage. Let the thieves spend time cutting a high quality safe open. In fact, maybe it would be good to draw attention to it for any person or group looking to take away firearms and valuables- is that clear enough, yet still veiled enough to slip through the rules? Rules change all the time, remember how the rules changed during hurricane Katrina?

If your quality safe holds your cheap and expected firearms, and other unexpected things are stored in unexpected places... might be a decent strategy for maintaining ownership.

Once I got it, I realized that it falls on you every time you open it if it's not bolted down, so I had to bolt it to the wall.

I put about 60lbs of weights in the bottom of mine, prevents tipping and would make it pretty awkward for a single person to carry it off. I'm not expecting it to stop anyone that is particularly dedicated (or multiple burglars who could carry it off), but it will hopefully at least prevent a smash and grab situation.

_________________"I told him that from what I had observed, it only took three days before desperation and hunger overturned all civilized instinct in a person. He smiled and said I had a bleak view of human nature,and that in his experience it was nearer to four days." -Far North by Marcel Theroux

I've had similar thoughts, OP. A quality safe is a great big neon flashing arrow sign saying "good stuff here". That could work to your advantage. Let the thieves spend time cutting a high quality safe open. In fact, maybe it would be good to draw attention to it for any person or group looking to take away firearms and valuables- is that clear enough, yet still veiled enough to slip through the rules? Rules change all the time, remember how the rules changed during hurricane Katrina?

If your quality safe holds your cheap and expected firearms, and other unexpected things are stored in unexpected places... might be a decent strategy for maintaining ownership.

Thats a twist on the idea thats actually pretty impressive- put your good stuff in the crappy safe (hidden somewhere and inconspicuous, maybe even covered in dust) and your crappy stuff in the good one (somewhat conspicuous and cared for).

_________________To lead and to fulfill the plebeians' desires, to corrupt and subvert. I need but to despise the very substance of truth and define what is right.

Seriously, this idea makes as much sense to me as a fake wallet to mess with muggers...maybe fun, but definitely overthinking things, and most likely to get you hurt and/or waste time and money...

Jamie

I've had quite a number of people with far more experience than me recommend a decoy wallet. Stuff it full of expired credit cards and old Iraqi dinars and when you get robbed throw it in one direction and run in another.

Naw, if I'm getting a safe, I'm getting a REAL GOOD safe, and I'm putting my good shit in there. I'm getting a safe that I could put in my front yard because it'd be so hard to move or break into that it wouldn't matter. Mind you, I live in Suburbia. Even in bad times, the cops are going to be there within half an hour, and most professional burglar teams (of which we have many 'round here) have a 10-minute op time when they break into an alarmed house. With a house without an alarm? Forget it. They'll back their car into your garage, shut the door, and take 2 hours to clean you out.

I'm not skimping on a real safe, and I'm not hiding it. That's why it will be at least a year before I get one. I want to do this right, and get a big one. I want PLENTY of safe.

But, "burglar proof" is like "bullet proof" or "Child proof": There's no such thing. There's only varying degrees of resistance, and we must all create integrated and multi-layered systems based on our budget, gear, and location that make it as hard as possible for people to jack our shit.

For instance, my BFF is a safe aficionado. He knows a lot. His father built and left the family a ranch house on a lot of land before he died a few years ago. In it, he installed a safe. My BFF examined this safe and found it to be absolute top-quality. Very nice, large, and difficult to get into. He then took all his guns out and put them under the bed. Why? Because at that house, in that location, someone could show up with a torch, or a hydraulic dolly and a dump truck, and could take 3 hours to either get into it, or just take it away entirely.

I have a small pistol safe for a decoy - not bolted down - several weights inside and room has hidden video to tape the crook carrying the safe out.

You should put some "Snake-in-a-can" things in there to really screw with them.....and if you are luck, in will poke him in the eye hard enough that he will sit there and rub it until the cops show up....

_________________

AmirMortal wrote:

I like the idea of spare ammo storage in those holes, but it would be more appealing if I wouldn't have to remove my butt pad.

I have a small pistol safe for a decoy - not bolted down - several weights inside and room has hidden video to tape the crook carrying the safe out.

You should put some "Snake-in-a-can" things in there to really screw with them.....and if you are luck, in will poke him in the eye hard enough that he will sit there and rub it until the cops show up....

Once I got it, I realized that it falls on you every time you open it if it's not bolted down, so I had to bolt it to the wall.

I put about 60lbs of weights in the bottom of mine, prevents tipping and would make it pretty awkward for a single person to carry it off. I'm not expecting it to stop anyone that is particularly dedicated (or multiple burglars who could carry it off), but it will hopefully at least prevent a smash and grab situation.

Speaking as someone who purchased masonry drill bits, tapcon masonry screws, and invested an entire day of utter misery bolting a stack on cabinet to the floor, only to have it still have some wobble in it, do you mind if I ask you a question (or two)?

What kind of weights, how much were they, where'd ya get them, and how on earth did you fit anything other than guns in that cabinet? That thing isn't spacious, but if I could squeeze some weights in there, I'd definitely give it a shot.

I dream of not only the decoy wallet and decoy safe, but even the aforementioned decoy house, which would look like the paper street house from Fight Club, but would have an expertly concealed escape hatch leading to a pneumatic tube style transit system to my secret underground lair. Which may or may not also be a decoy. That, my friends, is peace of mind.

_________________

doc66 wrote:

I'm the sick bastard that has firearms laying around the house. Does that count?

farblue wrote:

Damn lazy firearms. Wish I could at least teach mine to clean themselves.

I have a small pistol safe for a decoy - not bolted down - several weights inside and room has hidden video to tape the crook carrying the safe out.

You should put some "Snake-in-a-can" things in there to really screw with them.....and if you are luck, in will poke him in the eye hard enough that he will sit there and rub it until the cops show up....

Well there is that dye stuff...

See what you guys have done - now I am going to try to find ways to have some fun with the crooks if my safe is ever stolen.Can of mace attached to the inside of the safe next to the locking mechanism so when they drill into the can...........

I have a small pistol safe for a decoy - not bolted down - several weights inside and room has hidden video to tape the crook carrying the safe out.

You should put some "Snake-in-a-can" things in there to really screw with them.....and if you are luck, in will poke him in the eye hard enough that he will sit there and rub it until the cops show up....

Well there is that dye stuff...

See what you guys have done - now I am going to try to find ways to have some fun with the crooks if my safe is ever stolen.Can of mace attached to the inside of the safe next to the locking mechanism so when they drill into the can...........

A decoy safe may not be such a good idea. A lot of B&E guys like to get in and out quick with whatever they can. When my joint was robbed it was pretty clear that they spent a maximum of 5-10 minutes, overturned my mattress and yanked out drawers, grabbed my computer and stereo that were in plain sight not nailed down, etc. They may completely ignore a safe that would take a little while (even a few minutes) to open in favor of ransacking your closet and jewelry boxes instead. A decoy safe is only a good idea if the "hidden" items are also in a secure safe.

As for a safe in a safe in a safe Russian doll style, yeah that's funny. Put them all inside a fortified padlocked walk-in closet with a bookshelf in front of the door. Of course, if the safe out in plain view is truly a decoy safe, you shouldn't put anything remotely valuable in it, not even your cheaper "appeasement" guns. But oh the fun fantasies of what could be in a decoy safe...like a mirror hung at face level with the caption "dumbass" under it...a dye pack... a motion activated digital camera that snaps and uploads a photo when the decoy door gets opened...a child's sled with "rosebud" painted on it...a closed loop recording of the theme from "COPS"...a completely separate safe alarm, unconnected to the one they disabled breaking into your house, with all the features of a house alarm including calling the police, maybe it should be a silent alarm...pepper spray!...a realistic human skeleton chained by the neck to the inside wall...a coat rack full of ugly toupees..a blowup sex doll dabbed with mayonnaise...non-functional junk guns with RFID chips or GPS locators somehow pounded into the bore...a waist high stack of moldy 70s vintage porn magazines...a preserved cadaver stolen from a nearby medical school with a sign around it's neck that says "this is the last guy that broke in to my house"...a tiger pit covered by a small rug right in front of the decoy safe...a decoy safe that is actually an exit door, so the guy spends half the night breaking back out to your lawn, which lawn you've left littered with dozens of metal rakes, tines up, in the grass, so when he steps on one rake the handle will fly up and smack him and as he staggers back from that first blow he steps on another rake and the same thing happens again over and over...how about several decoy houses surrounding yours, like one on either side of your real house, complete with decoy stuff that doesn't belong to you, and decoy victims, with street addresses just one or two digits off from your real one...you could cleverly arrange your finances, like I have, so that all the surrounding decoy houses have much nicer cars in the driveway, with better lawns and cleaner exteriors and newer decor, so that they appear to contain much more valuable stuff than my own hovel...

_________________

George Orwell wrote:

Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

Last edited by squinty on Mon Apr 12, 2010 7:15 pm, edited 5 times in total.

Speaking as someone who purchased masonry drill bits, tapcon masonry screws, and invested an entire day of utter misery bolting a stack on cabinet to the floor, only to have it still have some wobble in it, do you mind if I ask you a question (or two)?

What kind of weights, how much were they, where'd ya get them, and how on earth did you fit anything other than guns in that cabinet? That thing isn't spacious, but if I could squeeze some weights in there, I'd definitely give it a shot.

It's just a stack of old 15lb plates from the local Goodwill (or any similar used stuff place, no point in spending real money on new ones). It is a tight space, they just barely fit and take up 2/3 of the available floor space. I've only got three guns and might be able to fit a fourth, but it keeps me from putting anything that isn't very short on the other side. Here is a pic....

A pretty half-ass bit of redneck engineering and not a real solution, but better than nothing and only cost me $10.

_________________"I told him that from what I had observed, it only took three days before desperation and hunger overturned all civilized instinct in a person. He smiled and said I had a bleak view of human nature,and that in his experience it was nearer to four days." -Far North by Marcel Theroux

Speaking as someone who purchased masonry drill bits, tapcon masonry screws, and invested an entire day of utter misery bolting a stack on cabinet to the floor, only to have it still have some wobble in it, do you mind if I ask you a question (or two)?

What kind of weights, how much were they, where'd ya get them, and how on earth did you fit anything other than guns in that cabinet? That thing isn't spacious, but if I could squeeze some weights in there, I'd definitely give it a shot.

WOW, if someone did throw that thing on a dolly, or even picked it up your guns would get all kinds of messed up.

Have you considered getting a roll of lead, slicing it into appropriate sized sheets to fill the floor space, then maybe a bit of carpet over that? That would add a lot of weigh in a very space conserving way, and unless you've got some really looong guns you should be able to fit more in. Or you could pour an inch or so of concrete with lead shot as aggregate. Those weights are probably just concrete under the plastic anyway. Hmm, now you got me thinkin' about mine...

I can stack 5 long guns in mine with mags attached, maybe more, they have to be staggered just right but they fit.

I think it'd be retarded to waste the cash on a -good- safe to be basically a fucking paper weight. If I had an extra $2,000 or more to spend on a good safe, in my "home security" fund... I would probably beef up my security system with cameras, motion sensors, lights, or something. I mean shit... maybe I'm "frugal" but I just can't see -wasting- $2,000 or more on what amounts to "peace of mind" that has a high probability of having no actual benefit to the chance that someone will steal my guns.

Sounds like a super dee duper dumb idea, where that cash could be spent in -much- better places. Good safes are effing expensive. If you're talking abouta Stack-On type security cabinet that's only an extra couple hundred bucks then... "meh". I think you're banking on "knowing" how to think like a burglar.

I wouldn't assume that if I saw a gun cabinet, that the guy -doesn't- have a gun SAFE somewhere else. I bought a gun cabinet to hold me over until I can afford a safe... so when I -do- get a safe, I will still have my gun cabinet, likely to keep ammunition and maybe my 870 or other 'less expensive' firearms in, to save space in the real safe. I imagine since I am nobody special, that this is not a rare or special case, but rather something that is often done... meaning thieves already figured that out. Thus using a gun CABINET as a decoy may be just stupid and ineffective... so we're back to using a 'quality safe' as the decoy, which I addressed above.

_________________

gravediggerfour wrote:

If you don’t know what your talking about don’t lead people, especially new people, astray.

Wow, we're all really overthinking. Secure guns are good, secure and hidden is better, safes are better than stack-on cabinets and good homeowners/renters insurance is worth every penny. You've already got an alarm system, save up for a quality safe like a Liberty (wish I could afford one) and know you did your best to secure your stuff. Nothing's 100% theft proof. Maybe having more than one secure container is good, if you had several hard to break into, hard to move safes then that might minimize the amount of stuff people get away with since it's spread out...but honestly, if I had the money for multiple high dollar safes, I'd probably just buy more guns. And I've had guns stolen from me, I know what kind of nightmare that is to lay awake at night and wonder if anyone has been killed yet with my stolen Remington 870. Sucks. But you can get too paranoid about theft, to the point where you don't even enjoy the stuff you've got even when it hasn't been taken from you.

Also, I'm embarassed because I only read the original post. Half the oh so "funny" jokes I threw into my first post on this thread, thinking I was original, had been made by earlier posters. Oh well.

_________________

George Orwell wrote:

Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

Stack on with a Mosin in it, with the safety engaged. Figure that one out fucker.

Rest of guns and ammo in a rusted out old fridge in the garage, with paint cans on top of it and a lawn mower in front.

_________________All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee.Terry Pratchett

_________________All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee.Terry Pratchett

I think you might find that your toddler, and like 80-85% of stooges who would try and take your stuff have way, way too much in common.

_________________.22LR/.357/Cheese Cake/SAK/Grey WireIf you can't laugh at yourself, you're in trouble.Slow is smooth, smooth is fastSecurity Guard/Wilderness First Aid/CPR for the Professional/HAM Technician